Waking Up to the City that Never Sleeps 30/4/14

The truth is, I don’t know anymore. 

During my three weeks in New York, most people have asked just one question: “Why are you there?”

   

I genuinely have no idea. I don’t know why, after 10 years living in Bath, I returned to Cardiff; nor, after 28 years living in London, I decided I had had enough. Nor why, in April 2009, I decided to move to LA. Actually, that’s a lie: I know exactly why I moved to LA. But I’ve written a book about that, so you’ll have to wait.

   

Most of the unexplained, apparent chaos in my life (though to me, it’s very ordered) can be put down to the acquisition of pine furniture. And men. It was the purchase of the small forest that first set my whole moving house ball rolling – a condition from which I was doomed never to recover. If I hadn’t bought that bloody pine furniture, I wouldn’t have had the quandary of where to put it when I broke up with Carl (who made me buy it), wouldn’t have moved it to Soho and had my heart broken by Phil, wouldn’t have moved it to Cardiff and started up with Steve, and wouldn’t still be stuck with it by myself in Cardiff over 25 years on at the age of 55, hoping that pine, like avocado-coloured bathroom suites, might make a comeback.

   

So, here I am again: despite experience, financial trauma, therapy, friends’ advice, bank managers’ warnings, in another quandary, wondering if I should move to New York. Or, rather, when my Cardiff house sells, have a place on the East Coast as well as the West.

   

I have several family members and friends who believe I am “searching” for something; I have friends who think I am nuts; I have a ton load of people in my life who wish, with all their hearts, that they could up sticks at a moment’s notice and clear off to another country with little more than a passport in their bags, as I invariably do.

   

When I was young, I constantly changed my bedroom furniture around. It was not unusual for my parents to return home after work (the days when kids could be left safely at home) to find that I had swopped the living and dining rooms around. One day, they returned home to discover the living room walls a different colour, after I discovered some paint in the garage and thought the room could do with a change of scenery.

   

No way is right; thank heavens we are all different. And maybe, at the end of the day, I just hunger for new experiences, new people, waking at dawn under a new sky (Cardiff: rain. LA: sun. New York: you just never know).

   

New York is astonishing in terms of being able to meet new people; I have never known such a friendly place. It may be because everyone is from somewhere else (I have yet to meet anyone who is from New York – they are all in LA, actually) that makes them want to talk. Singles, couples, gays, straights – everyone wants to share their story, but (and this is the major difference between East and West coasts) they want to hear yours, too.

   

Nobody in LA gives a flying fig about who you are or what you do. In five years, I can count on one hand the number of questions any stranger has asked me about my life; in New York, everyone I speak to pretty much knows within the hour the name of my first pet (George, a budgerigar, should anyone else be interested).

   

It’s what made the city transform, for me, from somewhere where initially I felt alone and overwhelmed, to a place so rich in its disparity of culture and people. And I absolutely love the 24/7 lifestyle.

   

The service, for the most part, however, is not a patch on LA, but improves considerably when you move off the well-trodden tourist traps. In those places, where one quickly becomes recognised as a local, there is always a complimentary drink; in five years, that is something that has happened to me just twice in LA, despite my having a number of regular haunts.

   

Last night, I found myself in tears as I made plans to fly back to LA, which I nevertheless continue to love. After the relative cold of New York, I will welcome the sun, and there are friends I have missed.

   

But I plan to return to the East Coast very soon and have a friend looking after two bags of groceries that I suspect I left to keep alive the notion of returning. Quite why I bought enough food to feed an army barracks for a month is anybody’s guess, but it’s still a little bit of me I left behind: some corner of a foreign field that is forever New York, New York.

   

My only thought now, as I wait to fly, is which objects the airline and airport thieves will decide to relieve me of before arriving back at my LA apartment. 

I already feel a weekend trip to the Apple Store coming on.

9/11 Remembered 29/4/14

Like most people, I know exactly where I was when the Twin Towers came down. 

I was having lunch in the Groucho Club in London’s Soho with my best friend Elizabeth and the writer Keith Waterhouse. A waiter came over to tell us that we should go upstairs to watch the TV as a plane had just gone into one of the Towers.

   

I sat, in a crowded room, in complete silence, watching, with disbelief, the sight that has now become one of the most devastating in our lifetime.

   

Initial rumours were that 20,000 were feared dead, and in the French House, a local pub, a priest openly prayed in the bar.

   

It will be 13 years on September 11^th since the attacks took place, and time has not lessened the impact on the city. Among New Yorkers, there is bitterness that the tragedy has subsequently turned into an argument over money; another dispute centres on the six minute film in the museum, which apparently fails to point out that the majority of Muslims are peace-loving, law-abiding citizens who do not run around blowing up buildings.

   

Others complain that the Freedom Tower and its sister that have gone up in the original Towers’ place are not tall enough. They wanted the biggest two-finger salute to Al Qaeda that it was possible to build.

   

But for many New Yorkers, 9/11 is too painful to talk about, and they have no desire to visit the site, nor engage in any commemoration of it. As one said to me yesterday: “I lived through it. Why would I want to be reminded?”

   

I went to the site yesterday afternoon, a perfect spring day in the Financial District, where the streets are eerily dark in the shadows of the buildings that stand sentry all around. Older buildings that look as if they could do with a good clean lend a grubbiness to the area, like poor relations who come to visit their better off cousins who long outstripped them in terms of wealth. In Liberty Square, the scent of tulips is overwhelming, the red and yellow adding some much needed colour among the greys and browns of stone and concrete.

   

And then you see them: two unostentatious towers of light like two angels that have descended unannounced, quietly, to restore order.

   

They are exquisitely beautiful. Most of my time here is spent photographing buildings rather than people, but this something else. Of course, their presence is loaded with the sadness of 9/11, which gives added poignancy to their place in New York history; but they also stand alone, both literally and metaphorically. They are the light of the future and, while the past will never be forgotten, they are a reminder that courage, fortitude and love remain at the heart of the human spirit.

   

When 9/11 happened, I wondered, if I had been a passenger on one of the planes, knowing it was the end, what my one regret in life would have been.

   

It was that I had never lived in Paris. Two weeks later, I was on the Eurostar out of London to pick up the keys to an apartment in the 6^th arrondissement, where I stayed for a joyous four years.

   

Ever since 9/11, I have tried not to live a Could’ve Would’ve Should’ve kind of existence. I cannot begin to imagine what it was like to live through the tragedy, nor to lose someone in such horrific circumstances.

   

But it taught me a lot about life: that it really is short, but it is also beautiful. 

Yes, there is darkness along the way, but it can turn on a dime.

You just need to look among the shadows for the angels.  

    

Whatever Happened to Men? 27/4/14

At my age, I am not hit upon very often. 

Actually, I'm not sure I ever was. My mum thinks otherwise and thinks I was just too blind or uninterested to see it. But I think there was always something of the hit-er about me, rather than the hit-ee. Well, men can be so slow. I've always thought that adults could learn from kids: “D'you want ice-cream, yes or no? Take it or leave it.” What child debates the logistics that we all come to apply to adult relationships?

    

“Hmmmmm . . . I know I want an ice-cream, but I'm not sure how much, nor what flavour I want, and do I want a tub or a cone, and a sugar cone or an organic cone, and what if I don't like it when I've got it, or a better ice-cream comes along, and what if someone tries to steal my ice cream . . . ?” Oh, FFS, just be grateful you've got an ice cream at all and get it down you.

  

Ah, life was so much easier as a kid. But now, I'm sitting in a New York bar listening, for the third week in a row, to men banging on about the complications of relationships with women. Not only is it something that I haven't heard British men do for 30 years (and even then, hardly ever), it's something I never, ever hear in LA, where everyone talks about work.

  

The man next to me has been talking about the look on some woman's face when he gave her flowers – for 20 minutes! I know the details of this bouquet so well now, I could be head florist at a Kardashian wedding.

  

It really is as if they all took lessons from Sex and the City, and it sounds so yesterday to me. I still watch repeats of SATC and still think it one of the most brilliant constructed and poignant comedies that, in my job as a TV critic, I have ever seen.

  

But the key was this: it was the women wittering on about men's inability to talk that was the key. Men are from Mars, Women are from Venus and all that.

  

Where the heck's the interest if men start going all twinkly when talking about how rosy a girl's cheeks go when she gets a bunch of flowers, blah blah blah? Trust me, sonny: it was embarrassment. She was about to dump you, which is why you're in the bar with your mate on day of said floral delivery, while she sits at home, plucking petals into her pedal bin and wondering how she's going to have the courage to tell you it's over. Which it is; it really is. I'm not only from Venus; I've conquered Mars.

   

I’m all for men having a sensitive side, and I have had more than my fair share of sensitivity lobotomised blokes; but when I go out with my male friends, I don’t want to hear them banging on about women; I have women friends for that. It is, perhaps, why all my close male friends are married with kids – they don’t have the time or inclination to go dating, or if they do, they’re certainly not telling me about it (well, with one exception, but discretion is one of my greatest virtues).

We talk about art and literature. Work and TV. Does any man even own a TV in New York City? I mentioned Will's death (I am still traumatised) in The Good Wife to a few and they looked at me with the kind of expression I imagine John Logie Baird had when somebody handed him a pair of pliers and an elastic band, promising the future of the moving image.

   

I suspect it is a New York thing, because the city is a real hunting ground – at least, it feels that way to me, after a little over two weeks here. Every single woman I meet bemoans the lack of available single men, yet to me there are dozens of them.

   

So far, I’ve been hit on in several bars and restaurants, the subway, an elevator, and by 80% of taxi drivers. Heck, one Russian driver was so gorgeous, I was all but booking my honeymoon in Moscow.

   

I don’t think I’m giving off vibes of desperation, because I am anything but; however, I am getting a lot of comments about my accent and my “cuteness”. Even women are squeezing my cheeks and telling me how gorgeous I am. It’s as if I’ve turned into the human equivalent of a tiny bonsai tree that everyone wants to tend and water.

   

It’s certainly a change from LA, where the women most men go for aren’t as old as my last toothbrush (ok, not quite, but you get my drift). The men who aren’t picking up them are way too busy working, making a fortune, and never hitting the town.

   

It’s definitely a change from my native Wales, where if a man buys you a pint of Stella, he expects you not only to be grateful but for you to go halves on it.

   

The differences between men and women will continue to be the subject of books, films, TV, papers and magazines, for as long as humans roam the Earth. It’s a subject that fascinates me. I just wish in New York that men would keep their sensitive mouths shut and go out to do what they’re really here for: kill bears, get me food, have a scrub down and ravish me in my cave. 

No words have to be spoken. They really don’t.

Blind Man's Bluff (or B******T) 26/4/14

There is a big difference contemplating going to a museum and actually shifting your backside out of the door to get there.

  

Since my arrival two and a half weeks ago, I wake up and Google all the great places that have been recommended. The Museum of Sex is apparently a bit of a laugh, but I still haven’t managed to get there. I suppose I am engaging in a kind of museum foreplay: a little bit of a Google here, a Tweet there. But it still hasn’t got me through their doors.

  

One friend recommended the Frick Museum, and, of course, the jewel in the NYC crown, the Guggenheim. When I hit 50, I vowed that the one thing I would never do again (apart from date anyone called David – by far my worst relationships, but that’s another book) was queue, so I paid $75 for membership of the latter, just to enjoy the priority entrance (or was that for the Museum of Sex?).

  

I still haven’t made it there, because the route from 106^th Street on Central Park West, where I have been staying, looks way too complicated. Helicopters might have to be involved. There is a bus that would take me directly there, but that would mean walking in the direction of Harlem first, and, with my luck, that would turn into another Find my iPad situation on the computer. If I don’t have at least one iPad stolen a year now, I feel as if I haven’t lived (my last stolen one, by the way, has shown up on my computer as being in Burbank, California, but the range of addresses is too vast for me to go there to confront the thieves. Just as well, I suppose).

  

So, it’s now lunchtime, and I am again contemplating the Museum of Sex, not least because someone is having a singing lesson at full throttle a little down the hallway. I am a trained singer and know a bad throttle when I see one (watch out, Museum of Sex – I can be very critical).

  

My experience of bars and restaurants is currently outdoing the museum visits, although, with the exception of Mickey Spillane’s on 49^th Street, I have found the service leaving something to be desired – namely, any service at all, in some cases.

  

A very nice Brazilian waiter gave me an extra glass of Chianti because a morsel of pork landed in the first glass (note to self: take pork scratchings to all Brazilian restaurants in future), and the youngsters at MS are a joy. But as for the rest, you could have three birthdays waiting for a frozen Margarita.

  

At one Italian establishment, a female Russian behind the bar was so aggressive, I thought the US must already be at war with the Ukraine.

  

The blind piano player took a shine to me, something that no one with 100% vision has yet done. He asked me how tall I was and, when I told him five foot, he said that I had the personality and charisma of a five foot seven woman, whom the gods had chosen to put in a five foot body as a joke. “They can be mean like that,” he said. “Look what they did to me.”

  

True, lack of inches doesn’t come close to blindness in terms of the gods’ punishment, but all the same, it put a bit of a dampener on the evening.

  

He then proceeded to sing every song to me – and I mean EVERY song, even changing the hair colour of the woman in Eric Clapton’s The Way You Look Tonight. Well, he had to shorten my explanation, which had been “dark brown from birth, but it lightened as I got older, then when I started going gray, I began to use Laboratoire Garnier, which I found much better than Clairol”, to “brown”. Heck, I was only trying to help the poor guy with the visuals.

  

The venue has the most exotic rest room I have ever seen. Candles, statues, even a small garden table and two chairs. I’m not sure I want anyone to see me on the toilet, let alone two Italians sharing a limoncello.

The whole escapade turned out to be a bit of a damp squib, anyway, as the many stone fountains of running water around the all too modern, white plastic receptacle, resulted in my barely being able to deposit a drop. I know that running water is supposed to have the opposite effect, but this really was overkill. There was enough running water in this tiny space to persuade a killer whale to empty its blowhole.

  

Which reminds me once again. I have to visit the Museum of Sex.

Another Murder Averted 25/4/14

Be aggressive, they said. Be tough. New York's not like LA. You have to have balls in this city.

So, I have managed a little over two weeks without much incident, give or take a suspected terrorist or two and a lost iPhone (spectacularly recovered from the local Jewish nursing home: never again will I speak out against the circumcision of infants, even though it is something I have come to admire in men over the years . . . But that's a whole other story).

I was catching my usual B line subway to get to 72nd Street, where I have befriended a few locals, most notably, Diana, who was my guest at The Lion King on Broadway. Spectacular as the production was, we both suspected there was something not quite right about the acoustics, as we both (and we weren't the only ones) said that we couldn't follow the story.

This being Disney, I suspected that it was along the lines of: young infant becomes an orphan at an early age, sheds large, geyser-like tears over body of dying parent, and emerges victorious to take over the community. Bambi. Tarzan. Lion . . . Ah, yes. The Lion King. I was way ahead of them on that one.

But back to the B line. Having spent two weeks trying to work out the subway, I yet again found myself on an unfamiliar route, where numbers suddenly took on names. Being familiar with the name Lafayette from the time I spent living in Paris, I thought it might be a safe enough stop to alight, even though I had not the slightest clue where I was.

I had just renewed my weekly card, which you are required to swipe only when going through the turnstile to your train. But when I exited at Lafayette, I was approached by a young man in a baseball cap (Agh, we're all going to die!) asking me for a swipe. It is, apparently, not a drug (I subsequently learned) but what people who don't want to pay ask you to do - swipe them through.

But no, I thought. I am going to be aggressive. Tough. This is New York. I am going to have balls. Big, big balls.

So, I say to the capped thug, who, I think at this stage, might possibly be posing as a copper (god knows why). "No way! I know I don't have to swipe on the way out!" And I sweep, even swipe, up the subway steps, thinking: I have SO got this city nailed! Balls by the bucketload.

And I start walking on the sidewalk (Get me. Sidewalk. Not even pavement anymore). Only to find said capped youngster beside me, way too close for comfort, possibly, probably with a knife (I have watched way too much TV), and he's shouting at me. I have no idea what he is saying, because I know I am about to die. I look for my balls, but they have shrunk to the size of a pair of contact lenses.

"I am so sorry . . ." I hear myself spluttering.

He shouts something again. And now, he has another capped mate with him, who is at least a foot taller, but luckily, he is too preoccupied with his iPhone to take much notice.

"I just didn't understand what you meant by swiping," I say, in my best Downton Abbey voice, and smiling. Smiling, smiling, smiling.

He is placated. His mate shakes his head, grinning, and they disappear. Murder averted.

But I am so shaken, I go into the first shop I find, explain to the security guard how I have just narrowly averted becoming another victim of The Gangs of New York, and he offers me a seat. And water. A lovely little tin of Perrier. With a glass. I spot a lovely dress on a rack but think that I am too much in my role as victim to ask Leonard (for it is he) to hand me a frock to help me get over my trauma.

"What colour were they?" asks Leonard, who is black.

"Black," I safely say.

"But why would they follow me out of the subway?" I wail, tearfully. Leonard shakes his head and tells me I have an hour before the store closes and to take my time to recover. I see at least three T-shirts I want to come back for.

Leonard could not have been nicer, and he and his assistant kindly point me in the way of the Meatpacking District bar where I am heading.

Forty minutes and several Japanese tourists later, I am hysterical outside yet another subway intent on taking me to Rikers Island, but thankfully a yellow cab arrives (as they so frequently do here) and he takes me miles and miles around apple-blossomed lined streets to my destination.

"Aren't we just going round in circles?" I tentatively, ball-lessly ask.

"Stars," he says. "I do it for the tourists."

When I finally get to the bar and order my wine, it is off, having been opened a little too long.

"I'll open another," the barman huffs, "but they were all opened today."

No, mate. They weren't. They really weren't. I know my wine. Don't take me on. You really, really don't want to do that tonight.

I'm a woman who once had balls. And they've just grown back.

Blue Sky Blues 25/4/14

I look up, through slices of silver glass, and see the purest blue sky I have ever seen.

Not the moody blue of Paris, or the inevitable cloud-infested blue of Cardiff; but a blue that makes you want to reach as high as you can to touch it.

Way beyond the throngs of people on the sidewalk below; past the hundreds of office windows; and way beyond the point of the highest top of the highest building. A place where there is only the silence of empty blue.

It is the moment I fall in love with New York City. The "energy" and the "vibe" that everyone told me I would love have passed me by; I lived in Central London for 28 years - I know vibe. No, what captures my heart are moments such as these: when you look up and feel the silence through the chaos.

I've been here for over two weeks now and, apart from one dinner with friends, have been pretty much by myself. Tourists in bars and restaurants are very chatty and friendly, and I met up with someone I knew only from Facebook, who accompanied me on Broadway to the musical Aladdin, courtesy of my good friend Tim Rice, who co-wrote the lyrics.

But apart from that, it's been an unusual period of isolation. It's been productive in terms of coming up with new ideas and getting them off to people but, but, but . . .

I haven't felt the slightest bit lonely, but the older I get, the more I realise that being single,

particularly as a female in your mid-Fifties, is a very strange place to be.

Almost all my friends have partners. Most are married and have children or grand-children, who take up most of their spare time. Outside of that, they want to spend some much needed time alone together,  not partying in the early hours with a woman who should be old enough to know better.

I am lucky always to have had my work, which I love. I am blessed in having a wonderful mother, brother and sister-in-law, to whom I am very close. I don't see them often enough, but that's nothing to do with my living mostly overseas; in fact, I have seen them more since living in LA than I ever managed to do living in Cardiff.

It's just that people have their own lives - quite rightly. Work takes us further away from each other and requires us to settle in new places more frequently than we once did.

Most of the time, being single doesn't bother me. This week, in New York, I was chatting with a lovely woman from another part of the US, and her husband ordered her back to the hotel - and I mean ordered.

I asked her what his problem was and she said his behaviour was probably as a result

of his being homophobic (we had been talking to a very vibrant transvestite).

I felt relieved that I do not have a man ordering me around. Let alone one who turns psycho at the sight of a bloke in a dress.

I love my freedom: deciding at a moment's notice to go anywhere in the world, without having to ask permission; being my own timekeeper; talking to whomever I want to, whenever I want to.

But if there is one thing that makes me long with all my heart that I had someone to .share some time with, it's . . . fairgrounds.

I have always loved the funfair.

I love the rides, and the higher, faster and scarier, the better.

Last year, I went to Barry Island by myself and went on a few rides, and you know what? It was no fun at all. So, although I am desperate to go to New York's Coney Island, I can already hear my tears - and not from fear.

I want someone to cling to when I'm scared; at the very least, I want to come down from a ride and tell the the person at the bottom too fearful to have come on it with me how great and/or how terrible it was.

I want someone to tell me that there no real spooks on the Ghost Train and that, no matter how scared you might be on the roller coaster, that's okay, and that no fear lasts forever.

Sometimes, I just want to share a little bit of blue sky.

My Brush with Death 18/4/14

"My name is Patrick and I am just out of prison."

The man who has just entered the carriage of the B train heading Downtown to Brooklyn is standing six inches away from me. He sounds forceful. Not angry. Just forceful. Like he's auditioning to play Brian Blessed.

"And I'll tell you what happens when you leave prison," he booms on.

Now, I am very nervous. Not just because Patrick is speaking very loudly, but because he is wearing a rucksack. In my vocabulary, rucksack equals almost certain death, particularly if in a confined space on public transport and being worn by a man who clearly has no fear.

I wriggle nervously and look around to see how everyone else is reacting. As they would in London, passengers affect nonchalance and roll their eyes. I resist yelling to everyone to get down, as I once did in Paris, when a motorcyclist entered the bar pretending to brandish a gun (how everyone laughed at the 'joke' as I gathered my prostrate body off the floor), and stare at Patrick.

"What happens when you leave an American prison is you get $40 and one subway ticket, so if any of you have a ticket you're not going to use, or even a dollar, I'd be very grateful."

I consider unzipping my bag to give him a dollar, but do not want to risk Patrick making a grab for my iPhone, which I have only just retrieved after losing it an hour before I caught the subway of doom.

At 42nd Street station, I change carriages. This is the station where, after seeing Aladdin on Wednesday night, I nearly lost my arm, which would have been considerably more distressing than losing my iPhone (lesson to self: never try to get off the subway when the doors are closing). There will always be another iPhone, but there won't always be another arm.

A lot seems to be happening on the subway. I came to lose my iPhone this time (it's something of a regular occurrence) when buying another 7 day ticket from one of the men who sit in booths trying to be more miserable than any other worker on the planet. Ever. Late at night, when engineering work is taking place on the tracks, and trains have to be diverted, these men (and the occasional woman) appear to take delight in sending you on a wild goose chase to the Bronx, where you are told that in order to get to 103rd Street, you have to go all the way back to 59th and start over on a different track.

Last night, after seeing The Lion King and on the subway home, I was lucky enough to meet Pedro, who works on the subway. Even he didn't know what was going on with the revised timetable, but listened carefully to every announcement in order to get me safely back to 103rd.

I could do with a Pedro in my life. But then I could do with a man to look after my iPhone, too. And one to put out the garbage. Anything else would be truly a bonus, and I would willingly sign up to being a sex slave if just these two small requests could be met.

Anyway, I have been out and about exploring today and haven't really changed my opinion from the one I held about New York when I came here 23 years ago: I don't like it much. I never thought any place could knock Miami off the top spot of being my least favourite city in America (actually, San Francisco came pretty close), but I think New York has managed it.

It really is like London - and not the nice parts. Just those bits you pass when you're on your way to Paddington Station in a cab and give thanks that you don't live there.

A friend who loves New York asked me a couple of days ago: "What's not to like?"

Where do I begin?

The filthy streets, the noise, the appalling service, the tourists, the misery ingrained on everyone's faces, the depressing subway, the towering buildings casting a shadow over everything they survey...

At least I have my iPhone back. Apple's system tracked it to a Jewish nursing home on 106th street, where a very nice lady who had found it at the subway ticket booth phoned me back when I sent a signal to the phone.

Life, for the moment, has returned to calm. I am in Soho House in West Village and thinking about eating out tonight for the first time (oh, yes, that's another thing - it's way too expensive to eat out here).

Let's add that to the list of requirements I want in a man: one who will pay for everything.

Something tells me that isn't going to be Prison Patrick.

LA vs NYC vs London 14/4/14

No matter where you go in the world, people look for divisions.

In my native Wales, it’s a north/south thing. The people in the north versus the people in the south - we don’t like their accents, they don’t like our wealth; and those in the west versus those in the east - we envy their scenery, they envy our transport.

  

In the UK as a whole, it’s a lot easier. The north (Scotland) and west (Wales and Ireland) don’t like the east, purely on the grounds that it’s England.

  

In the US, it’s a west/east coast thing. I’ve been on Los Angeles’ west coast for five years and love everything about it: the weather, the service, the people, the relatively cheap cost of living.

There is no moment more gloriously satisfying than sitting at the end of Santa Monica pier with a frozen Margarita watching the sun go down over the Pacific. Actually, that’s not strictly true: watching the sun go down over the Pacific having two frozen Margaritas possibly beats it.

  

In LA, there is no envy of anyone living on the east coast, and in particular New Yorkers. The overwhelming feeling is one of pity: the congestion, the noise, the dirt, the rudeness, the expense – Californians are consumed with sorrow that anyone has to endure such living conditions. New Yorkers, on the other hand, take pride in a transport system that enables them to move around their city with ease, and a lifestyle that is pretty much 24/7. You can’t afford to live it, but hey, ho, swings and roundabouts and all that.

  

Having been here nearly a week now, though, I have to report that I have met not one person who likes living in New York. Just like the people I meet when I go to Paris, everyone wants to live in London. Having lived there for 28 years, I am baffled why anyone craves what is easily now one of the most expensive cities in the world, not to mention one of the dirtiest and most impersonal.

  

So far, New York is way too much like London for me, and I am missing LA, which, more and more, feels like home. But I’m trying to become an east coast girl, at least for a while.

  

Yesterday, I went jogging in Central Park, for instance: not because I like jogging particularly, but just because it’s what they always do in the movies.

  

The problem was that the whole of New York had the same idea. A beautiful, warm spring day is all it takes, it seems, to get people outdoors. In LA, the Sunday equivalent is taking a hike up Runyon Canyon – all very slow and relaxed; in Central Park, I was nearly knocked down by three runners and a veritable herd of cyclists. SLOW DOWN, people!

  

But here’s the weirdest thing about this place – it really is like Sex and the City. In LA, everyone talks about deals and productions; here, they talk about relationships. In every bar and restaurant, that’s all you hear: he said, she said, where’s it going, where did it go, what did he/she mean . . . On and on and on. It’s like being in Relate kindergarten. Not since I was 25 have I heard so much self-absorption on the subject of the complications of love.

  

Maybe it’s my age; maybe it’s my not being in a relationship – but really, it’s all very tedious. It got me thinking about what I actually talk to my friends about. In our 40s, it was all about how much profit we had made on the houses we had bought at the bottom of the market and sold at the top; in our 50s, it’s about how much money we’ve lost on the houses we bought with the profits because we hadn’t bargained for another recession.

  

We talk about work, art, books; most of all, we laugh. About everything. I am so blessed in having so many wonderful, very clever, very funny friends.

  

And d’you know something? That’s something I don’t see much of on either east or west coast. Laughter. The kind that rocks your body and brings tears to your eyes. The kind I share with all my friends and family in both London and Wales. The laughter born of a humour that is the thing, to me, that most defines who we are.

  

It’s not that Americans lack humour; even the most cursory glance at their TV sitcom history and their brilliant chat shows (Jimmy Kimmel, Jimmy Fallon, David Letterman) bears testament to an immense sharpness of wit and imagination. You just don’t see much laughter on the streets. I’m beginning to wonder whether it’s considered the height of rudeness, a bit like blowing your nose in public is in Japan.

  

I 100% want to stay in California, but yesterday I found myself looking down lists of apartments in London to have as a second base. Yes, the city I claim to hate. But I wondered if everyone else loves it so much, what am I missing?

  

I’m certainly missing my family and friends.